Philippians
2:12 Words from the Apostle Paul: "As you always obeyed, so now,
not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you,
both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

The
earliest comment in the Scriptural narrative made about the character
of man, was made by God in the second chapter of Genesis: “It is
not good for man to be alone.” In that particular account, we know
that the condition was solved by the production of a wife ... but
such a solution is clearly not universally available in the
circumstances of a man's or a woman's isolation. Also, the sense of
loneliness or abandonment may exist even if there is another human
being physically present. Old persons, for example, may receive care
from others, but through mental degeneration have no sense of
relationship with them. In such a state we can become self-centred
and difficult, because of not holding ourselves accountable to others
for our own actions. Younger persons too may fail to escape the
inherent self-centredness of our imperfect humanity, not holding
themselves accountable to others for their own actions, and under a
variety of circumstances becoming difficult and unaccountable,
leading even to some of the heartbreaks our community has endured in
recent times.

But of course, you may say, the
Church has always taught, and teaches still, God's Presence as the
primary reality of our life. But we do not always hold firmly in
practice even what we might truly believe. Churchmen do not always
put into practice our pledged discipleship, the pledge of our baptism
to belief and obedience. We do not always, in the famous phrase of
Brother Lawrence, "practise
the presence of God." The monastic lay brother known as Brother
Lawrence who wrote the little spiritual classic called "The
Practice of the Presence of God" had a lowly position in his
monastery as a kitchen worker, and it was in the context of his many
years of cleaning up the kitchen rather than meditating in his cell
or in the chapel that he developed his simple spiritual classic on
practising the presence of God, a work of help and direction that has
gone all over the world and into the widest variety of forms of
Christianity.

MODEL
OF OBEDIENCE TO GOD THE FATHER

St. Paul's great model of obedience
to the holy will of God was the obedience of the incarnate Christ
Jesus, who on earth was emptied of the exalted position of His divine
nature and took the form of man, and was willingly obedient as God's
suffering Servant-Messiah to the death of the Cross. In Gethsemane He
cried, "Not my will, but thine be done!" Our Lord immersed
Himself completely, so to speak, in the creation, but He was not
captured or beholden by it. Even His death was not a defeat by
it, but rather an exodus from
it, and His pathway is our spiritual exodus from it as well. The
Gospels make it very clear that in His incarnate life on earth the
presence of His Father was with Him and sustained Him. The works that
He did and the words that He said were what He saw His Father
accomplishing and uttering. His spirit of obedience was a continual
celebration of the presence of His Father, so that in His life we see
the perfect and complete "practice of the presence of God."
May it be said of God's people too that their spirit of obedience is
the celebration of the presence of God with them.

For all that, however, it’s worth
pointing out that both in the Old Testament and in the New, the value
of our human
presence to one another is made clear. We do sometimes forget that
Paul's use in Philippians ch. 2 of the example of Christ leaving His
exalted position beside the Father to become man and suffer for our
sake was to point to the relationship needs in the church, the need
of the church brothers to be "of the same mind, having the same
love, and being in full accord and of one mind, doing nothing from
selfishness or conceit." God’s solution for the loneliness of
Adam is not what God could very well have said, “Well, Adam, see Me
here.” For if God had so chosen, His own sufficiency for Adam’s
company could have been presented, but instead, we are told, God made
for Adam human company. We can take this to say to us how necessary
it is that when we see somebody become isolated, like an elderly
person living alone, or a young person starting to go off the rails,
we should do what we can to make of ourselves some human company for
that person. From the very first, part of the design of our human
species is that we should associate with one another and not remain
alone. We ought to do what we can to offer such association as a gift
to those who show need of it, in whatever condition of life they may
be. Actually, that’s following the example that God shows us in
Genesis.

The New Testament very deliberately
incorporates this pattern. Even though the Lord Jesus indeed
“practises the Presence of God” in His obedience to the words and
works of the Father, the very core of His work involves the formation
of human company, and in particular His twelve disciples, who have
become the apostolic foundation of the Church. When His work on earth
was completed, Jesus Himself left no work of art or writing as the
fruit of lonely genius. What He left on earth was indeed something
that could and did produce these things, namely, a human company, the
apostolic Church, the extension of the Incarnation, the divine-human
Body of Christ on earth. And from New Testament times, this has been
far different from a number of individuals isolated from one another
and practising their religion. The Presence of God has involved them
in company both with Him and with one another. They, or rather we,
because we ourselves are part of that company, are in communion or
fellowship with one another and with Him. In St. Paul’s writings in
the New Testament we discern the relationship he has with those he
writes to, and that relationship is one of accountability. The
Apostle is accountable to God for his charges, and they in turn are
accountable for their behaviour to the Apostle as well as to God who
gave them the apostolic relationship in the first place. He says to
them, "As you always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence
but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work
for His good pleasure." St. Paul affirms that his presence,
though now veiled from them by his imprisonment, had been necessary
for the ongoing faithful discipleship of the Philippian Christians.
It is not good for the new
man in Christ always to be humanly alone. The design of the New Man
requires for its formation the new human company, which the Son of
Man Himself called a Kingdom.

For
the Lord Himself refers to the new state or company He came to earth
to set up as “The Kingdom of God”. Within the Kingdom of God
there is accountability, a spirit of obedience. His parable of the
two sons, one of whom obeyed his father in spite of his saying he
wouldn’t, and the other not obeying in spite of saying he would,
illustrated this accountability. Jesus said that the way the
religious leaders of His day had not believed the message of John the
Baptist illustrated their real lack of accountability to God, in
spite of their reputation of being religious men, in contrast to what
had been shown by the faith of less reputable people.

When
we pray “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in
heaven”, we are expressing the faith that God’s work for the
establishment of the Church on earth will continue until the end is
achieved. May we in our own time and circumstances find in this work
the reality of true communion and fellowship with one another, and
real obedience and accountability in our human relationships, under
the headship and authority of the Lord.